So its our third summer in our house, and for the third time - I've planted a vegetable garden. Its a funny thing, each year I've had wildly different results. As a general rule, 70% of what I plant will grow and yield something, the other 30% will have succumb to some sort of problem or just *not* grow. The weird thing is that out of the 70% of things that actually grow, every year I'll have one or two things that do exceptionally well (sometimes to the detriment of the stuff planted around them).
The first year, it was bell peppers and yellow squash that wouldn't grow. Peas on the other hand got completely out of control, and a half sprouted potato Mr. Pants planted yielded a surprising crop of new potatoes.
The second year, it was cucumbers and beets that failed and all four kinds of tomato plants I put in exploded and I had more tomatoes than I knew what to do with.
This year, we got off to a bad start. We planted all our vegetables before going on vacation at the end of May - and apparently while we were away, the weather got cold and we had a lot of rain, which obliterated most of what we planted.
The beets, peas and swiss chard and tomatoes survived - but the carrots, cucumber and eggplant didn't. I replanted the carrots, beans and cucumbers, the carrots totally failed, and the cucumber plants have exploded and are beginning to overtake the row of beans next to them (even though I have them trained on cages). I've never had cucumber grow this well before, the first year I managed to get a few baseball shaped cucumbers and that was it.
This year it looks like I'm going to have more cucumbers than I'll know what to do with, and our potato and tomato crops look really promising this year too. I'm dissapointed about the carrots - usually they're so easy, but they wouldn't even come up this year.
The peas are hobbling along, they aren't doing as well this year. The beets and swiss chard have been coming along well too. The strangest thing thats happened this year is the window box of spinach I planted.... is now full of something that is definitely not spinach. I have no idea what is growing in there, or what went wrong.